In Sending Cash Transfers to Women: How to Design Programs that Enhance Well-Being While Safeguarding Against Intimate Partner Violence, the Center for Financial Inclusion and the World Food Program discuss the benefits of direct cash transfers to women, but cautions that design choices can put women at risk of intimate partner violence (IPV).[1] While cash transfer programs have been shown to reduce IPV, the report acknowledges, “As women assert their role in deciding spending priorities, it could result in disagreements and trigger conflict or backlash.” Accordingly, the authors offer the following recommendations:
- Critically for the Inclusive IPS, support digital means of payments to ensure women’s control over funds (in contrast to physical payment instruments) and for technology that increase women’s autonomy, such as biometric authentication
- Additionally, for other stakeholders involved in cash transfer programs:
- Ensuring household benefits are communicated to recipients, rather than benefits to women only
- Local community and men’s engagement in program design
- Strengthening women’s social capital
- Collaboration with partner violence case management organizations
- Monitoring feedback on partner violence from the community
[1] “Sending Cash Transfers to Women: How to Design Programs that Enhance Well-Being
While Safeguarding Against Intimate Partner Violence,” Center for Financial Inclusion,
September 2023, https://www.centerforfinancialinclusion.org/wpcontent/uploads/2024/02/Sending-Cash-Transfers-to-Women-Report.pdf.